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Contact: Liz Carroll
Phone: 413/775-1420
E-mail: carroll@gcc.mass.edu

Media contact: Liz Carroll
Marketing & Publications
413/775-1420 | carroll@gcc.mass.edu

Release date: February 14, 2005

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

A GCC love story for Valentine's Day

They found success, and each other, at GCC

Love was not what he was going to GCC for, insists Arah Stosz, a nuclear security officer. "I was looking to further my education, and ended up furthering my love life!”

Shannon Stosz, too, was looking for a better life. "My life was a pretty scary place before I went to GCC. I never had a real job,” says Shannon, who had worked at grocery and convenience stories. "I went through a very bad relationship and break-up, and I was raising my daughter on my own. We had to move in with my parents, and that's how I went to school. It was frightening. I had no money. I didn't honestly think that I'd be able to make anything of myself. But I had gotten to a point in my life when I thought, ‘Well, I need to turn my life completely around. I'm going to go to school and hope that something here is going to make a life for me and my daughter.' I wanted a job in a field that was going to help people.”

Shannon and Arah, both 23 at the time, were enrolled in Amanda Damon's Spanish for Law Enforcement course. "It was a really fun class,” says Shannon. "We got to know a lot of people and we started hanging out as a group outside of class. And then the two of us started using studying as an excuse to see each other. We had a lot of study dates and then finally he just asked me out to dinner and we started dating.”

Arah was attracted to "just her personality in general. She's caring and always puts other people before herself.”

To Shannon, the 6'5” Arah was "tall, dark and handsome. And very charming! He's calm, soft-spoken, very intelligent, so I was just very easily drawn to him.”

That was in September of 2001. Seven months later, Shannon and Arah became engaged and were married in June of 2003. "We went on our honeymoon over July 4th,” says Shannon, "and in August we found out that I was pregnant! Shane was born on March 11, 2004.”

Arah continues to work part-time towards his degree in criminal justice, and hopes to be a police officer. "I've always felt that GCC had a more personal touch than anywhere else,” Arah says. "GCC is a nice, down-to-earth school, and the professors are real easy to talk to.” In fact, Amanda Damon, who taught the class in which they met, is now their best friend.

Shannon went on to earn her associate's degree from GCC, which paved the way for her present job as emergency medical dispatcher for BHS Ambulance. "I'm answering 911 calls,” explains Shannon. "It can be very scary at times, when there are panicky people at the other end of the phone. But at the same time, you feel that you can help them and get them what they need and calm them down, and that feels really nice at the end of the day.

"I honestly never thought that I could get this far, when I look back on how everything was a couple of years ago. Arah and GCC both changed my life incredibly!”